This enables financial recognition of second and third place as well as the overall winner of the prize awarded every four years.
Founded in 1964, it was given its current name in 2008 after receiving a $100,000 grant in honour of Dr Bernard H Breslauer. Winners, including Dutch scholar Ina Kok who came top with Woodcuts in Incunabula Printed in the Low Countries (2013) in 2018, receive $10,000 in what is arguably the most prestigious prize in the antiquarian book world.
With the extra endowment, second place will receive $5000 and third place $3000.
“The discipline of bibliography is not usually a lucrative pursuit,” said Felix de Marz Oyens, president of the BH Breslauer Foundation. “It is important therefore that the practitioners of this branch of scholarship be encouraged as much as possible by institutional libraries and also by the rare-book trade, which profit from it. We hope that these prizes, which are not inconsiderable, will continue to play a major role in that encouragement.”
The jury takes into consideration publications relating to descriptive and analytical bibliography, the history of the book, typography, paper making, historical and artistic bookbindings and more.
Submissions for the next prize, awarded in 2022, are now open.
